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With the return of Pig Pampering Day at Indraloka Animal Sanctuary on
Saturday, May 20th, I thought I would devote May's "Did You Know" essay to,
you guessed it...cows, sheep, goats, camels, deer, giraffes and
hippopotamuses. Just kidding...let's honor our precious, pleasurable,
peaceful pigs. Pigs actually are related to cows, sheep, goats, camels,
deer, giraffes and hippopotamuses as they are all members of the scientific
order of mammals called Artiodactyla, meaning even-toed ungulates.
(Perrisodactyla mammals, odd-toed ungulates, include horses, rhinos, zebras,
and tapirs.)

Pigs are highly intelligent, curious animals capable of performing
complex tasks and forming elaborate, cooperative social groups. Despite what
many of us have been brought up to believe, pigs are naturally very clean
animals. They designate discrete sites for defecating and urinating far from
their sleeping and feeding areas. Near their nests, pigs often have rubbing
sites, usually trees, which they use to aid in grooming when other pigs are
not present to assist them. They regularly bathe in water and wallow in mud
in order to prevent heat stress. The mud covering their bodies also offers
protection from flies and helps to prevent sunburn.

Despite the commonly used expression "sweating like a pig," pigs do not have
sweat glands and can be prone to heat stress, so wallowing is very important
for maintaining body temperature. On colder days, pigs may reduce their
foraging activity to conserve energy. Being vulnerable to hypothermia, pigs
instinctively huddle together to stay warm as young piglets and maintain
this behavior through adulthood.

Pigs belong to relatively stable social hierarchies, which play an
important role in self-regulating behavior and maintaining group harmony.
Whereas unfamiliar pigs who are intensively confined and crowded in
industrial operations will engage in aggressive behavior, in the wild, pigs
are naturally gregarious animals and the members of the groups maintain
close contact at all times, often engaging in such social behaviors as
huddling and grooming. They sleep in communal nests that adults help to
maintain by adding fresh bedding materials such as branches and grass.

Pigs greet one another energetically and by making contact with their
snouts. While foraging or exploring, they stay in contact through constant
vocalization and are always aware of each other's actions, often learning by
watching others' behaviors.

Social recognition, or the ability to identify familiar individuals, is a
key to forming stable relationships. Pigs have strong capacities for
identity recognition and social organization, and recognize other pigs
primarily by their powerful sense of olfaction (smell), much as humans rely
on visual cues to distinguish between friends and strangers. Pigs also
utilize visual cues for social recognition, but with their powerful and
heightened olfactory and auditory senses, they have other ways of
communicating that are beyond a human's capacity for perception. For
example, pigs have well-developed hearing and vocal abilities. Their large,
pricked ears act like radar dishes and can localize sound to a threshold of
just 4 degrees, making them, like cats, one of the most accurate localizers
of sound in the animal kingdom. They can distinguish between very subtle
differences in tone and are known to use more than 20 different types of
vocal noises to communicate during feeding, courtship, exploring, and other
social activities. With these vocalizations, which include grunts, squeals,
and growls, pigs are able to communicate to others such information as their
location, mood, well-being, and intent.

As you can tell, pigs are highly intelligent animals with a unique
capacity for sustaining and enjoying their existence. If I may, allow me to
get a bit more up close and personal regarding these non-human animal
treasures. I have been visiting the sanctuary for about seven years. I visit
with all the animals with each of these visits. All our sanctuary animals
have the propensity to feel the energy we carry with us on any given day.
That is one of their numerous gifts they offer us. The pigs are second to
none in what they see in us and how they react to us. They have sat gently
with me when I needed that gentleness. They have played with me when I
needed to play. They have listened to me when I needed to speak. I have had
many a prolonged conversation with Duncan, while he just patiently stood
next to me, looking directly into my eyes, as if to say, "I'm here, I'm
listening, and I understand." In the words of Sir Winston Churchill,
Britain's famed prime minister, who was quite fond of pigs, "Cats look down
on you; dogs look up to you; but pigs look you in the eye as equals."

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